I enjoyed watching the Kirk v. Gorn myth. I am an amateur pyrotechnician and I've made many, many lbs of black powder (thank you for not calling it gun powder!).

There's been a bunch of chatter on the 'net about how you messed it up, I'm sure you are used to that. The chatter surrounds two areas: the powder and the bamboo. First, the powder:

I'm sure you know black powder relies on a specific ratio to work correctly (or a relatively narrow range) and I won't share that here. I'm not quite sure why you tried 30 different ratios? Just for realism? Anyway, the power of your powder was not all that surprising. There is the matter of the preparation, and then there is the matter of the charcoal - activated lab charcoal - which probably makes the worst black powder ever. Even though the charcoal is a small part (by weight) of black powder, it contributes the most of all the ingredients.

Referencing to an excellent bit of work by Danny Creagan** (an amateur pyrotechnician), we can see that some charcoal performs extremely poorly. While he's never done activated charcoal that I can see, the burn trough tests he's done show variations from nearly 10 seconds (BBQ briquettes), down to the more reactive woods at 0.3 seconds (white ash and others). Commercial BP comes in between 0.3 and 0.9.

I was very surprised to see how reactive your BP was given the parameters of the myth. I'm left wondering if a more reactive charcoal (maybe Kirk would have found some Maple or Poplar charcoal?) wouldn't have made a huge difference. Given your results with the activated charcoal, I'd say that your incorporation/preparation techniques pretty closely match that which may be achieved by a mortar and pestle.

Then there's the bamboo. I think you are spot on - trying to make a cannon out of bamboo is a Bad Idea™ without a doubt. Again I don't want to go into too much detail but the Chinese likely invented firecrackers by using bamboo. One thing that struck me there however was that maybe you over-thought the methodology for strengthening the breech end. You used plywood, a steel rod, and some form of epoxy if memory serves; which I think we'll all agree is likely not something James T. had available. What he did have available however, is a material the Chinese used (and use) with great success: clay. One could have packed clay (or clay bearing earth) in the end of the tube to create quite an effective breech plug. Clay is very common in pyrotechnics, and it's definitely something I'll try the next time a Gorn is chasing after me.

So ... I'm betting I could make a reasonable go at killing a Gorn with a field expedient cannon, but I agree with you that the methods shown in Star Trek would not have worked. I enjoyed the episode very much, and do appreciate the attention to detail. There are some of us out here who do understand what goes into some of the explosives-related myths, and we do appreciate you not falling into the typical mistakes which plague many shows.

Thanks for an excellent show! And, while I do miss Kari, I enjoy Jessi on the show very much!

** Typically I reference a source a little better, but I think it's best if people went some place other than the Mythbuster's forums to find more info on pyrotechnics.